Putin Should Let Medvedev Run in 2012, Adviser Says

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning the sale of weapons to Iran, the
government said today in a statement. Photographer: Vladimir Rodionov/AFP/Getty Images

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin should let President Dmitry Medvedev, his protégé, seek
re-election in 2012 rather than return to the Kremlin and risk
unrest like that in Tunisia this month, a Medvedev adviser said.

“Look at what is happening in Tunisia,” Igor Yurgens, who
heads a research institute set up by Medvedev, said yesterday in
an interview. “People won’t understand why Russia can’t choose
a new, more modern-looking person who is more open to the
outside world. Everyone is fed up at seeing the same face.”

Putin, 58, a former KGB colonel, has continued to wield
power as prime minister since handing the presidency to Medvedev
in 2008 after the two consecutive terms allowed under Russia’s
Constitution. Putin hasn’t ruled out running for president in
2012, when he could serve for 12 years, as Russia now has six-year presidential mandates.

“When a single person stays in power for a long time, even
if he is a very good person and was brilliant at the start”
there needs to be a change, said Yurgens, chairman of the
Institute of Contemporary Development in Moscow.

Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, 74, who
had been in power for 23 years, fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14
amid protests sparked by rising food costs and unemployment.

While not a government official, Yurgens is close to
Medvedev’s team and like-minded Cabinet members such as Finance
Minister Alexei Kudrin, said Sergei Markov, a political analyst
and pro-government lawmaker who advises the Kremlin.

“Yurgens says what part of the elite thinks but can’t
express openly,” Markov said in a phone interview. “He can be
considered as influential and is part of the president’s team.”

Khodorkovsky Case

Yurgens also criticized the conviction last month of jailed
former Yukos Oil Co. billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky on new oil
embezzlement charges, saying it was a step backward for
Medvedev’s goal of attracting more foreign investment.
Khodorkovsky, a Putin critic who was scheduled for release this
year, won’t be freed until 2017.

Medvedev, 45, a trained lawyer, has made the fight against
corruption and promoting the rule of law the cornerstone of his
presidency.

“The investment climate is not terribly inviting in the
Russian Federation at the moment, especially after the
Khodorkovsky case,” Yurgens told Bloomberg Television in an
interview broadcast today, a week before Medvedev travels to the
Swiss resort of Davos to address the World Economic Forum.

“No one can feel he is immune from the system and that is
a very bad signal,” he said. “Mid- to long-term if we don’t
solve this case in a positive manner, it will be very bad.”

Political Opponent

Khodorkovsky says his imprisonment was revenge for opposing
Putin, who was president at the time he was arrested in 2003.
Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil company, was bankrupted by a
$30 billion tax claim and sold off in pieces to state oil
company OAO Rosneft. Putin denies any role in the case.

U.S. and European governments condemned the new jail
sentence for Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, saying it
further weakened judicial independence and would discourage
foreign investors.

Yurgens said in an October interview with the Moscow
newspaper Kommersant that Khodorkovsky should be released to
signal a move away from a “massive, arrogant and strong state”
that is oppressing business.

Russia is the world’s most corrupt major economy, according
to Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions
Index issued in October, sliding to 154th among 178 countries,
alongside Tajikistan and Kenya.

Gorbachev Sees ‘Friction’

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said in October
that Putin’s United Russia party “has been doing everything it
can to move away from democracy, to stay in power.”

Medvedev has been showing signs of independence, and this
is creating “friction” between him and Putin, Gorbachev said
in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

Putin’s voter support fell to 31 percent in December from
37 percent in June, while Medvedev’s rose to 21 percent from 17
percent, according to a poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center.
The survey of 1,611 people nationwide was conducted Dec. 17-21
and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

Medvedev would like a second term, his economic aide,
Arkady Dvorkovich, told the BBC in comments broadcast Dec. 10.

“I believe he does” want six more years in the Kremlin,
Dvorkovich said. “Otherwise, he would not work seriously on the
initiatives he announced.”

While Putin could serve Russia in any other capacity,
“there will be fewer political and economic risks if Medvedev
rather than Putin governs the next term,” Yurgens said.